


Define Human (ACT I.)

by f0rt1ss1m0



Category: Original Work
Genre: Family, Family Drama, Future, Gen, Genetics, Near Future, Science Fiction, cloning, generally cool stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 16:23:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10948266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/f0rt1ss1m0/pseuds/f0rt1ss1m0
Summary: Generation Z has grown up, and with the shining years of the 2050's, they've ushered in an age of overwhelming genetic discovery. Abiola Labs, the research group founded by the infamous prodigy Elijah Ben-David, has created the first living human beings from scratch.At the greedy hands of Ben-David's coworker, a new age dawns — an age where to have your own personalized, customized synthetic child is the highest symbol of status. Hundreds of "synths" are abandoned due to mutations or misbehavior. In a world of twisted morals where people are products, five defective synths must defend a doctrine that died with the old days — a battle cry of identity, compassion, respect, and what it means to be human.-By popular demand, I present installment 1 of "Eli and the Weirdos", the fictional cartoon from the Petri Dish AU! This work is almost always in progress, so please read and leave constructive criticism. Extra content can be found on equilateralwaffle.tumblr.com in the tag #define human. Thank you!





	Define Human (ACT I.)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys!
> 
> So, this is it, the big original project that's been in progress for almost six years — and all I have written is the prologue. I've rewritten this thing more times than I can count (which is why many, many things are different from how I presented them in Petri Dish), and all I'm hoping is that this will be the last time. 
> 
> I'm very nervous about posting this, and will likely take this publication down when I finish and send this off for official publication. Legal reasons and all that; and while I would die for Petri Dish, I'm not all too jazzed about my PG middle grade/YA novel — which will likely be read by my parents — being connected to that fic. Still a minor, still in a conservative household, y'all. Wish it could be different. 
> 
> Anyway, I'll shut up now and let you read. Thank you!

Before we destroyed it, Abiola Tower was my second home. Dad built it, Mom named it, I was born in it, and my siblings caused a war in it. I knew its halls like the creases on my palms. They made clones there, test tube kids, dreamchildren, cyborgs, amalgams, and every other alien thing that blurred the lines of natural and artificial intelligence and generally caused the ethicists their worst headaches.

It’s also where I learned to ride a bike.

Every weekday until I was ten, Dad and I would take the 8:39 train into Chicago, stop by someplace for breakfast, and walk down to Abiola. I had just turned three when we took a detour to a toy store. He bought me a purple basketball and, while we were standing in line, told me that I was going to have siblings.

Being three years old, I didn’t know what this meant. But I said okay, and after Dad left me in his secretary’s office, I forgot about the siblings and slam dunked my new rubber ball into a wastebasket. I told Dad’s secretary that I was gonna be a pro basketball player.

Not long into my game, the elevator down the hall opened and Stirling Carcina strode out. From what I knew of him, he was Daddy’s best friend; he had helped oversee almost everything about Abiola and was even the brother of Birth Mom. (Not Actual Gene Donor Mom — she wasn’t around to be Birth Mom.)

Stirling was very tall and had white hair even though he wasn’t old, and his hands wore gloves of tattoos that stretched under the sleeves of his pristine white business suit. He always wore cologne, and I knew because you could often smell it from several feet away. His shoes were very shiny and very loud. 

“Hi Mister Stirling,” I called. But he only kept walking as if he really needed a men’s room.

This was not normal. Stirling was hard to dislike. He kissed babies and walked old ladies across the street and he  _ always  _ said hi to me. Sometimes he gave me presents. But today he was stressed, and only one office occupied Hall 33-A. Dad’s. 

I hadn’t gone into Dad’s office today because he had a lot of fragile things, so it made me feel weird to see Stirling swipe his finger and stride in before I did. “Elijah,” was all I heard before the door clicked shut behind him. Another thing that made me feel weird. He  _ never  _ called my dad Elijah unless it was bad.

So I put my ball underneath my arm and found a broom closet.

There were a few ways to get into Dad’s office — the front way which was guarded by fingerprint scanners and DNA-based security, an elevator used to carry up supplies from the storage levels, and a serpentine passageway that connected every closet in the building up to Dad’s office. At three, I only knew the ones on the top few floors, but later, when I turned seven, I scaled the building all the way from Basement 17 up to Hall 33-A entirely with the passageways. This one, leading directly from the south end of 33-A to Dad’s office on the north end, threw me into the passage behind a stack of boxes and a slab of drywall on hinges.

In I went with my purple ball and my pink glow-in-the-dark sneakers. It was always very dim and smelled like burning hair, and I took two downs, two ups, three lefts and a right.

I emerged behind the third workstation. Dad’s office wasn’t so much an office as it was his private storage shed, and was home to leaning towers of papers, glass pipes of unknown fluids, and a wall of books in a hundred sizes, colors, languages. The only light was a strong blue-white from the twelve screens. In one word? Chaotic. Something out of a tacky sci-fi film about an evil computer hacker. It smelled of that Dad-smell; of shaving cream, pizza, and coffee.

Stirling, a thin slip of a ghost in the uneven light, stood with his back to the main door. That was the first time I’d ever seen him angry — his mouth stretched like melted string cheese across his plastic face. He blinked too much.

“You know that I CAN do that, Stirl” was what I heard. 

It was Dad’s voice, but not the one I knew. I knew it to be as warm and resonant as a summer thunderstorm, accented but clear, and now it was a husky whisper.

He stood directly across from me, but with his back turned and hands set on the bars of a baby’s crib. ( _ That’s where it went,  _ I thought, because it hadn’t been long ago that Dad made me transition to the big-girl bed.) Unlike the anxious Stirling, Dad’s stocky form was unnaturally still.

“And in any case,” Dad continued, “I already shook on the deal. Rohan is bringing A-V-D tomorrow and we’re going down to Los Angeles for the newborns on Sunday. Plans made. Flights booked.”

“Those kids aren’t yours to take,” Stirling snapped. I couldn’t make out my dad’s expression.

“Right. Assigning owners to people now. So whose are they, then? Yours?”

Stirling didn’t respond. My father reached into the crib and pulled out a bundle of mint green blankets.

“I’m sure you can handle just one,” he nodded down to the bundle. “Do you want to say it? Does she belong to you, Stirl?”

“STOP CALLING ME THAT!” Stirling drove his foot into the ground, making me jump. Then, something surprised me more — the nearly inaudible whine of a baby. Dad turned around. I stared. All I could see was its head and every part of me ached to rush forward and grab it, but fear kept me crouching.

“Wow!” Dad’s sarcasm puddled on the floor. “You scared her. Now you need to be completely silent until she’s asleep again and you’ll probably have to STAY silent so we can keep her that way.”

Stirling seemed to shrink a couple inches. “She’s an S-unit. She can sleep through anything,” he muttered sulkily. “You’re making excuses.”

“Yeah. But at least I’m being considerate towards other people while I’m doing it.” Dad shrugged and began to sway gently with the baby in his arms. His glasses reflected a flash of light.

“You know, Stirling, you’re really childish, you know that, right? You’re — you’re worse than Dea’s friends. Look, the other day the neighbor’s kid came over to our house and showed her this one toy. It was an e-cigarette. I asked him where he got it and he said it was a birthday gift from his brother, so I took it away and gave it to his parents. The kid’s never talked to me again.”

Dad tilted his head, sized up the look of disgust on his friend’s face, and kept going.

“You’re like that kid. You took an idea that you had no right to use and burned its terms and conditions. You sell it to the world in the name of making yourself look good, you claim to own human beings and expect them to be okay with it — and you can’t get it through your head that you DON’T know what you’re playing with.”

Stirling stepped forward. “Stop talking about me like I’m less than you! Can’t you see, YOU’RE the one who doesn’t understand — I know what I’m doing!"

“I can’t even see how a human being could be this frustrating.”

“Hmm. I swear you’ve used a mirror before.”

I hadn’t caught the comeback, but Dad did, because he gave Stirling a scathing glare. “That was low.”

“So are you, for picking up defectives!”

“What about you? You caused their defects — ”

“What could I have done? Companies misuse tech all the time.” Stirling lifted his hands out. “No, no, the thing is, Elijah, I was just doing what I was supposed to. You made me your manager and said I needed to protect Abiola. So I sold synth tech to do that, so what? We can’t keep going off patent money alone! We had to appropriate the experiments to the domestic market eventually — ”

“No, we DIDN’T!”

For the first time, Dad’s voice snapped into the range of a shout, echoing across the the office. The baby in his arms stirred and let out a soft, keening whine; Dad turned his head down to her, murmured something I couldn’t make out, and began to rock her again.

“You,” he began again, quieter now, “did nothing for the company. The purpose of Abiola was to study artificial gene synthesis and synthetically conceived human children. STUDY the kids, Stirl, not to…to SELL them! This isn’t Build-A-Baby Workshop! It’s not some — some twisted department store, and these children aren’t products!”

Stirling shifted his weight for the hundredth time. I’d never seen him this angry and I prayed with all I had that I wouldn’t have to see it again. Even in the blue-tinted light, his translucent skin was inflamed with rage.

“I don’t have TIME for this again! It’s ALL here, all the evidence, you don’t understand that money doesn’t magically fall from the sky! You expect to earn your way to the top by doing RESEARCH?! You have a company to run and you’re sitting here burping a baby! You’re INCAPABLE and — ”

“And you’re an insensitive prick.”

Dad had turned back towards the crib and the armful of infant disappeared behind the bars. When he stood up he loomed — though next to Stirling, he was a much less intimidating figure. Just an inch above five feet; one day I’d be taller than him. But when their eyes locked, Stirling seemed to shrink.

“This isn’t up for debate,” Dad said. “I will not let you build a slave empire under my roof.”

Stirling only needed two steps to cover the distance in between them, and his strong tattooed hand snapped up the collar of my dad’s polo shirt. I almost screamed. Dad didn’t raise a hand to defend himself.

“So this is what you want,” he said, closing the ten-inch difference between them with words. “Is this Carcina Tower now? Is that what you want? Because you’ll never get it. You don’t know what you’re doing. Please, stop.”

Stirling’s hand jerked at Dad’s collar, close to either tearing the fabric or lifting my father off the floor. “Are you saying I’m not as good as you?”

“We used to JOKE about me being better than you,” Dad half-laughed. “Remember high school? ‘Eli’s smartest, Esther’s strongest, Stirling’s richest’. And it never bothered you ‘til money got involved.”

Dad’s voice cracked and Stirling tried to interrupt, but it didn’t work.

“You don’t remember? Any of it? Esther’s pact — even that ridiculous title:  _ The Abiola-Ben-David-Carcina Constitution of Artificial Human Conception.  _ ‘Cause you’re ripping it to shreds, right now. We have a thousand e-mails about dreamchild orders pouring in, and every time you confirm one, you’re tearing it up more. You don’t have to — ”

“And now you’re BEGGING.” Stirling finally managed to drown out my father as if he didn’t hear a single word. He probably hadn’t. “Well, it’s not working. That pact meant nothing. I’m NOT going to just let you SIT there while I could be there instead!”

“Stirl...”

“SHUT UP!”

Just like that, Stirling lifted his other hand and used both to throw my father to the ground. He fell on his side, only grunting, but before he could stand I broke the fear that had told me to stay down. I ran to him.

Stirling said a word that I was later told to please not repeat in public and then reached into his jacket. So I did the first thing that would appeal to a three-year-old — I threw my ball at his head.

In hindsight, I realize that he was probably reaching for a gun, so it was stupid to throw something at him, but I had one objective: protect Dad. He stood up and had seen me, but didn’t say anything, just guided me behind him and adjusted his glasses. Stirling held his mouth, bent at the waist.

“There it is! That’s your problem!” Dad exclaimed. He let his hand drop and I clutched it. “Every time you do something, you turn it into a fight. And it’s something that you’d do well to get help for. Since you’ll have all this free time.”

Stirling took his hand away from his mouth and looked down at it, as if surprised that it existed at all. I saw red on his fingers, tinged blue in the light. His head jerked up wildly. “You’re…firing me?”

Dad only inclined his chin. It was enough of an answer. Stirling began to tremble. 

“We did this together! Everything you put yourself to do, you did with me. I was the one you told everything! Ha — HALF of your workforce, Eli, you wouldn’t do this — ”

Never had I heard a grown man sound so scared as Stirling did then, with some strange mixture of rage and unadulterated terror. Dad just hooked his thumbs through his belt loops and looked at the floor. “I think ‘together’ fell apart when you started selling children.”

Stirling shook his head, his throat releasing a choked laugh, and for once Dad was the one to cut him off.

“You have six months to clear out. You and all your twisted followers. I never want to hear your name again.”

“Eli — ”

“Get OUT! NOW! Get away from my family and DON’T COME BACK!”

It was the first time I had ever heard my dad really yell. With it came an unconscious squeeze of my hand. Dad’s teeth were clenched and I could tell that his eyes, though cast in deep shadow, were glassed over with tears.

Stirling did not reply. His mouth opened, his mouth closed, his forehead glistened. Again I noticed that he did look like a ghost but not a very good one — like the tissue paper things our neighbors constructed for Halloween, left out overnight, and which melted in the rain. More frightened than frightening, perhaps. It made me confused, the blend of emotions at that time, because it was fear  _ of _ Stirling and fear  _ for  _ Stirling all at once.

My instinct to defend would continue to perplex me starting then. Stirling turned around, walked stiffly to the door, and was gone.

Even before the door clicked shut, Dad lifted me up and hugged me desperately tight. I had never been separated from him for any time longer than a day, and it had only been fifteen minutes since we’d seen each other last, but in that moment I knew what it would be like to lose him for sixty years and reunite with him again. I swore I would never let go.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have seen that. I’m so sorry, Dea, you could have gotten hurt, I…”

He was crying, and because of that so was I. He stroked my hair. For heaven knows how long he held me, and we swayed back and forth in the pulsing light, just  _ there. _

It was only when a small keening joined the hum of Dad’s computers that either of us moved again, both towards the crib.

“Oh,” said Dad shortly, and then, “oh,” again but brighter. “I don’t think I introduced you yet, did I?”

I shook my head. So he shifted me to his right arm for a better view, pulled the baby’s mint blanket away, and beamed as proud as if he’d made the thing himself. Now, I’d seen babies before, there were dozens of them in Abiola alone, but it seemed for some reason that I should react to this one differently. So there was a small human just laying there. Big deal.

“Talk,” I said, jabbing my finger at her face.

Dad gave a breathy laugh and guided my hand away from the baby before I could touch her. “Be gentle, Dea. She’s going to live with us, and she’s got three friends who will be coming later.”

I scrunched up my nose. In my mind, someone else in our house meant less time I had with Dad. “Why?”

“She doesn’t have another place to live. So you play nice with her and her friends, okay? Dea, do you understand?”

I kept staring at the baby mostly because she’d been staring at me, through two narrow, emerald green eyes. Again I tried touching her but with a different approach — I went slowly and with my hand open, palm up. I imagined that she would touch it, and I’d like to say something that dramatic happened, but it didn’t. She just looked at it, then me again.

“Her name is Syl,” Dad said. “Say ‘hi, Syl’.”

“Hi, Syl,” I repeated. It was a weird name, pronounced like  _ “sill” _ . I expected her to respond. I also learned not to expect much out of my new baby sister.

It was getting uncomfortable sitting on Dad’s arm, and asked if I could go back to playing. So when he set me down, I ran off, picked up my purple ball from where it had rolled under a table, and skipped through the main door.

And I hadn’t seen it, but as I left, Dad smiled wearily. 

**Author's Note:**

> (I know this is in the work notes, because it's always true.)
> 
> I have no idea when the next chapter will be out! I'm writing this basically while you're reading it. 
> 
> But...you can bribe me by leaving comments about what you like, dislike, and hope to see in the future! Or if that's not your forte, I love questions and fan content. 
> 
> Feel free to message me at equilateralwaffle.tumblr.com! All related content is under the tag #define human. 
> 
> Love you!


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